Herman de Vries

Like nature itself (or as de vries would probably say, because it is nature itself), his work bears limitless viewing. His smaller scale works often involve sampling and collecting; an array of leaves taken from one willow branch; earth rubbings in widely varying colours; cherry leaves fixed where they fell on a piece of paper beneath their tree -. Often, a purposeful symbolism or association is involved - an exhibition of earth samples taken from Chernobyl, handwritten lists of vanished Scottish forests and bundles of branches representing the trees felled. In this beautiful book, the distinguished writer on art Mel Gooding contributes a critical overview of de vries’s work, setting it in an art historical context and appraising it as an important reflection of the cultural consciousness of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.